I’ll be blogging the GOP debate tonight, for my sins. Stay tuned.
Category: The Dish
“Mexican Mediocrity”
Steve Sailer goes there:
I’m often denounced for drawing attention to the salience of race and ethnicity to immigration policy. Under an ideal immigration system – limited numbers of legal immigrants chosen for their high human capital rather than for family connections – race and ethnicity would be much less relevant a question. India, for example, is not high IQ region on the whole. If we imported millions of random Indians we would have trouble. But, because Indian immigrants tend to be selected for skills, assimilation into middle class America is less of a problem for them.
Leaving the race question out of it entirely (as I think we should), I do think that not enough attention has been paid to the altogether welcome move in the current immigration bill to put brains and talent before family connections in determining who gets to become an American. It’s long overdue.
A reader comments:
Even though Steve sometimes has some good points, they are often so completely commingled with quasi-racist dreck that he’s painful to read. And the comments on the post that you linked to make me want to take a long shower…
Me too.
Face of the Day
A boy stands in front of stacked wood at a timber market June 5, 2007 in Wuhan of Hubei Province, China. By China Photos/Getty.
Our Moral Slide
Amerians are getting gloomier about their own virtue.
Tinky Winky Is Straight
But he has really good taste in interior design. And he watches a lot of Bravo.
Hillary’s “Botox”
Not so much. Just so the Democrats understand, this is nothing compared to the avalanche of anti-Hillary trivia and bile that will be unleashed if she gets the nomination. It may not be fair, but it’s a reality. If the Democrats want to save the Republican right, if they want to reboot the entire VRWC, they know what to do. Support Clinton.
“Please Don’t Bomb Us”
Bummer
Eeyore gets a t-shirt.
“JPod Punditry”
Greg lets it rip:
It’s all so neo-con play-book 101, isn’t it? Problem is, it’s kindergarten fare, and totally removed from complex reality. It’s airily aspirational Trotsky meets Partisan Review meets Scoop Jackson meets I don’t like Arabs much meets faux national greatness let’s (unconvincingly) play pretend I’ve got the biggest cojones on the block. It’s utopic, hugely under-informed travesty masquerading as convincing policy. Time to (more decisively) throw out the old playbook, I guess, and get real. Sooner rather than later. More failed states could be around the corner, after all … the clock’s ticking.
Let’s hope JPod retains his sense of humor.
Has She Come Undone?
I can dream, can’t I? For the record, Clinton’s last two appearances were, to my mind, the best I’ve ever seen her. She was almost luminescent at last night’s faith-off, and more approachable than Obama. I don’t think it’s all Botox. The blogosphere, meanwhile, is absorbing the latest polls. Joe Gandelman thinks that Clinton’s "inevitability" advantage is over. Jonathan Singer gets the core data right, I think:
I am interested to see that a trend that I’ve been watching a little while – Democrats breaking towards Clinton, Independents breaking more towards Obama – seems to be holding, at least if this Gallup poll is to be believed. Polling in recent weeks from both The Pew Research Center and The Cook Political Report seem to show this trend as well.
McCain? It may be that Romney is distracting him from more important matters:
Even if McCain utterly crushed Romney underfoot and won over all his supporters, he’d still come in second. John? Pay attention to Rudy. Pay attention to Fred. Mitt is not your #1 problem.
Don’t take the Hewitt bait.
